Safety and Security: Therapy & Self Help

 This section on safety and security is intended to discuss the ways in which survivors can regain a sense of security after losing their sense of safety. It can be useful for survivors and their loved ones. Each person will have a unique experience as they seek to regain a sense of security, simply because the loss of security is incredibly personal.

In the previous posts on safety and security, we have gone over the ways you can feel unsafe and what way security can be regained. This post is about the emotional and mental tools one can gain to move past the fear and build security.

There are many types of therapy available and personal work one can do to help move past trauma. Research is being done on a variety of new therapies that use various substances to aid in therapy such as ketamine and mushrooms. The exact combination of therapy and perhaps medication that works for one person may not work as well for another. It can be a journey. (I talk about my own journey with medication in the Vlog: A Chat About Med Changes” - DM)

The most common therapy that people with severe anxiety or hypervigilance seem to get is called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy which focuses on thought patterns and building in tools to cope with those patterns or problems. This is different from therapy to process trauma which may utilize EMDR. 

“I found a therapist who was an excellent fit for me and my particular constellation of symptoms to work with when I finally gave in to needing therapy. The goal was always to add more tools to my personal toolbox so I could move through my emotions to be functional.

One of the biggest tools was learning to step back from my emotions and work on rationalizing out my anxiety and fears. There are days it works better and days it doesn’t work very well, but keeping perspective that my feelings are valid but not necessarily a true reflection of reality is important. We have a saying in our house - Your mental illness is lying to you. 

It helps to remember this when I am feeling particularly scared, whether its of myself or the world around me. When my brain says “You aren’t safe.” I have to reply “Why not? Explain it to me.” and more often than not we get into clearly irrational levels of unlikely scenarios.

There are risks to leaving home but the odds of those risks are low. I am far more likely to get in a car accident than attacked by a strange man while looking at strawberries in the grocery store. That being said, the realistic risk that each person faces depends on their location and society, but the ability to rationalize what is a realistic risk and what is not helps me decide if my mental illness is lying to me. 

And if I am being lied to it. It makes me want to prove the liar wrong. Spite gets me through what stubbornness has not. Sometimes that means telling my agoraphobia to fuck off because I want to see my friend and sometimes that means just getting out of bed to shower. Because you know what… ptsd likes to tell me I am not worth it and that I'm failing but I am worth it and I am not failing. My level of success is not measured by what others can do but by how far I have grown on my own journey. I am here. I am alive longer than I though I would be. And most days… I am HAPPY with my life. 

My mental illness is a liar but I can use my rationality to help me move past those lies and that is the greatest tool I gained from my self work and therapy. The ability to rationalize the fear and make decisions based outside emotion.

Well that, and working past my fear of medication. ”  - DM

Therapy can be a great way to learn new tools but it is not the only option. Therapy can be difficult for some to access for any number of reasons. There are some excellent self help resources if you want to start on this journey.

Some of the most amazing resources allow you to access workbooks, toolkits, and guides designed for mental health for free online. Mindremakeproject.org and  Mentalhealthathome.org both maintain lists of free therapy workbooks that can be accessed online. It may take a little time to look through their lists to find the resource that is most applicable to you.

“Technology can be an amazing tool for self help as well. I use the Calm Harm app when I am struggling with self harm ideation and an EMDR app when I need help calming down. There are also mood trackers to help you spot patterns and build healthier habits. 

I do still advocate for therapy but the work you do on yourself and by yourself can be just as important to your healing journey. - DM”

Fostering Classes

 Hello Friend,

In case anyone is thinking of taking fostering classes, I wanted to share my experiences and suggestions.

Quitting my Management Job

 

I really struggled with the decision to quit but it came to a point where I KNEW it was time.

A Chat About Med Changes

 Hello Friends,

Lets talk about Med Changes!

Catching Up - December 2023

 Update for December 2023

Hello Friends,

I am just awful about posting but am trying to be better in 2024. Lets kick off with a chance to catch up.

New videos will be coming on topics such as Med Changes, Taking Fostering Classes, and relationship issues.

- DM

Safety and Security: Safety Loss

This section is intended to discuss the loss of safety and how that impacts survivors of abuse. It is more relevant to loved ones and those wishing to understand more about abuse, as many survivors are extremely aware of what safety loss is.

The introduction on Safety and Security defined safety as "a place free of danger" or " the state of not being dangerous or harmful." This will vary by survivor but there are some very obvious factors.
A safe place will be an area where the survivor is in relative control of their ability to leave. It will be free of potential triggers, including their abuser, and will allow the survivor to feel they have physical control over external factors. Depending on the survivor's mental health, a safe place may also be free of any objects that can be used to self harm, toxic people, or other anxiety inducing triggers unrelated to the abuse.

A survivor may feel that an area is no longer safe if they experienced abuse in that space, rendering the entire area a trigger, or if their abuser has unfettered access to that space. It is somewhat uncommon for open public spaces to feel "safe" for this reason. Alternately, survivors with intense emotional responses may avoid spaces where they last felt unsafe, even if the space itself was unrelated. This is similar to how a place someone cries in after a break up is associated as a sad place.

"I have PTSD which presents with hypervigilance. I find that unless I know all the exits, likely persons to enter a space, and what can be used as a weapon that no space feels particularly safe. Clothing choices can make safer spaces feel less safe, if I do not feel that I can run or fight. This means that I can feel perfectly fine going to see a movie in jeans but that wearing a dress would be entirely too much. I would feel too vulnerable. There really isn't a rational reason for this, as none of my abuse took place while I was wearing a dress. It is simply that I do not feel very safe unless I am locked in my own home, and anything that could make me more vulnerable outside of that space seems like an unnecessary risk.

It is to such an extreme that I have opted out of work events meant to honor myself and others, simply because I could not be sure what the layout of the room was and if someone would be able to come up behind me. I realize on a rational level that a room full of people being honored for commited work is an unlikely place to be attacked but I would feel so incredibly vulnerable that I would not be able to enjoy the event and it would likely make me physically ill.

I am actually worried that if I do not make myself go into uncomfortable situations sometimes that I will become agoraphobic. It tends to come and go along with my depression, but I will make myself get dressed and go get food outside of my house if I realize that the only time I have left is for work. I tend to be anxious and paranoid the entire time. Sometimes a loved one will come with me, and that helps, but occasionally I still ask to leave early or hide in the car. It makes me feel like crap because normal people can go grocery shopping, to lunch, or to a film without being so scared all the time. I honestly hate it. I wish I could feel safe in more places."  -D.M.

Safety and Security: Regaining Security

This section on safety and security is intended to discuss the ways in which survivors can regain a sense of security after losing their sense of safety. It can be useful for survivors and their loved ones. Each person will have a unique experience as they seek to regain a sense of security, simply because the loss of security is incredibly personal.

Safety is largely about the physical space one can occupy. It can be difficult to find spaces that are safe simply because removing any trigger and having complete physical control over a space is often limited to one's own home.

Security, on the other hand, is more about the internal feeling of safety. It is how safe someone feels when navigating the world as a whole and their life. A lack of security can manifest in many ways including anxiety, paranoia, insecurities, anger, fear, phobias, etc. Many people will become defensive rather than admit to a feeling of insecurity in a space.

"I touched on my feelings of insecurity in the last post. I have a very hard time feeling safe in public spaces unless I do things like wear pants. For me, regaining security has often been about identifying what generates the most anxiety and fear, then working to minimize that.

I like to feel like I have a fighting chance. I want to be dressed in a manner that lets me run or fight. I want to know how to get in and out of the places I am in. And I like to go places with people I trust to keep me safe in those places.

Home is harder. I am very happy to live in a new apartment that I have no associations with. I have a library even. I do find that when I am very anxious or insecure that I want to curl up in a ball in the bottom of my closet. I am currently working on not doing that. I allow myself to go hide in the library. It has a very comfy seating area with a blanket and some stuffed dinos. I am allowed to curl up in there but not in the closet. The goal is to work to a place where being alone in a room feels as safe to me as physically hiding in a small space does.My therapist and I chat about that sometimes. It is really hard but making myself be willing to walk away, be alone, and come back has helped.

I also find that people I am close to are usually really amazing. I tend to react to someone's disappoint or anger with me by becoming very scared they will scream at me or hit me. I am never entirely certain people wont react this way, even if they have never done so in the past. I understand that is is an irrational feeling coming from internal sources. I have been working really hard to talk to my current partner about these feelings. He is really great about explaining that he isn't going to hurt me, understanding that I can't turn off this thought process, and just helping me work past it. I also have a close friend who makes a point of apologizing and just being really blunt with me. He doesn't get angry with me, because he doesn't allow anything to build to the point of anger. It does come off as abrupt at times but it helps me identify behavior I can work on without getting to the irrational place. It has helped me a lot to simply have people understand that I can not turn off the thought patterns or the fear. I KNOW one thing but I still FEEL another. I hate knowing I can trust a friend or partner entirely and then being so scared of them that it makes my stomach hurt and my hands shake. They don't deserve it and neither do I. But I know that this behavior is what helped me get through some really dark places, so it is very hard to explain." -D.M.